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Nightlife: A Dance Until Dawn Itinerary

Miami Beach's red carpet approach to nightlife means one can literally dance till dawn, from South of Fifth to Millionaire’s Row. Fittingly, a serious sartorial vibe starts to take shape at sundown, against the first faint drumbeats of the coming night. If looking good means feeling good, then Miami feels fantastic. So get lost in the music. It’s time to dance.

11:30 PMAmnesia
Few clubs have the moxie to command half a city block, but Amnesia, tucked into the South of Fifth neighborhood and reclaiming its original location from Opium Garden/Prive, manages just that. The legendary nightlife space—which reopened in October after 15 years and a $10 million renovation—roofed the space and channeled the spirits of cavernous European-style clubs typical of Ibiza. Stadium seating tiered like rice paddies rises around a basketball court-size dance floor, with 70 bottlesonly tables and 270 degrees of catwalks surrounding the whole amphitheater-like space. Amnesia sports speakers everywhere, breathtaking computerized lighting, amazing sound quality, fog, and visual projection systems housed in the biggest DJ booth in Miami, where the likes of Bob Sinclar (one of Amnesia’s owners) spin house, funky beats, and hits on Fridays and Saturdays until 5 am. Amnesia’s is a bottles and models crowd protected by a tough door policy, but once the sheer size of the room reveals itself, the party is on. 136 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, 305-538-2424

Supply and demand make beautiful dance partners, and no South Beach club does it quite like Wall—almost as if long lines yearning for entrance are part of the architecture. LIV and Amnesia may thrive on voluminous confines, but Wall feels more like a sophisticated house party where everyone’s a VIP; it’s an intimate, mirrored box of a club sporting a rim of tables seemingly bumping against the DJ booth. Music is pleasantly unpredictable, leaping from live hip-hop shows, to vocal-driven remixes, to rock, rap, indie, and house—it’s all in a night’s work. The probability of running into a celebrity or baller (former Miami Heat star Rony Seikaly isn’t just one of Wall’s owners—he DJs, too) is higher at Wall than at other clubs, particularly during Favela Beach, its manic Tuesday-night soirée. 2201 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, 305-938-3000; wsouthbeach.com

There are nightclubs, and then there are megaclubs, measured not just in size, but in the talent they draw (both in tight dresses on banquettes as well as behind the DJ booth). By all measures, LIV is mega. Marqueeworthy house-music DJs such as Kaskade, Tiësto, Axwell, and David Guetta anchor Fridays and Saturdays, with a genuine desire to play the room. And what a room it is: Back in the 1950s, original designer and Art Deco architecture titan Morris Lapidus couldn’t have imagined that his world-famous, oceanfront 1,500-room property could have housed such a technologically advanced den of excess. The dual-level space has a swooping grand staircase, laser beams, computer-controlled concert lighting, and an LED-embedded rotunda ceiling that acoustically amplifies ear-tingling Funktion-One sound. Go-go dancers? Check. A LIV robot? Check. Five hundred people begging and name-dropping to get in at 3 am? Check. But perhaps the most surprising aspect of LIV is the recent introduction of live music, with hip bands such as Foster the People, and important ones, like The Overtown Music Project’s big band swing ensemble. 4441 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, 305-674-4680; fontainebleau.com

As a dreamy waterfront hotel and bacchanal headquarters from boutique lodging pioneers Morgans Hotel Group, the Mondrian isn’t so much designed as styled. Netherlander Marcel Wanders transformed what was once the center tower of The Mirador apartments into an Alice in Wonderland-inspired whitescape, with fantastic, oversize features (wondrous, car-thick columns, gold bell chandeliers) that venture into the macabre (an amorphous, jet-black staircase, omnipresent painted anime-inspired characters). The interior Sunset Lounge is a two-tiered play on black and white, and wired for serious sound for its Friday parties, while the outdoor Sunset Lounge is a billowy red-carpeted plateau of a watering hole hovering above the nocturnal charms of Biscayne Bay. DJs blow up the pool decks during Legendary Sundays—the biggest, and some say best, Sunday fun-day party spot on the Beach— morphing from brunch to bikini-clad debauchery in mere hours. Oh, and don’t miss the unbelievable caipirinhas. 1100 West Ave., Miami Beach; 305-514-1941; mondrian-miami.com